100 Years after the “Great Debate”: How Edwin Hubble Expanded the Cosmos
In 1924, Edwin Hubble found proof that the Milky Way isn't the only galaxy in the Universe.
“Heed Their Rising Voices”: Annotated
In 1960, an ad placed in the New York Times to defend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists touched off a landmark libel suit.
The Sweet Story of Condensed Milk
This nineteenth-century industrial product became a military staple and a critical part of local food culture around the world.
Black Women Were Also Lynched
A case study of the 1912 lynching of Mary Jackson in Harrison County, Texas, provides insight into the contradictory culture of racial violence.
The Haitian Revolution and American Slavery
For both US politicians and enslaved Black Americans, the Haitian Revolution represented the possibility of a successful violent rebellion by the oppressed.
Do You Own Your Body?
The idea that our bodies are our own may be intuitive, but when it comes to market transactions like surrogacy, our beliefs and feelings get more complicated.
Anaxagoras and the Eclipse: The First to Get It Right
Scholars sometimes credit Thales or Empedocles of Acragas with the first correct theory of solar eclipses, but it was Anaxagoras who had the science right.
Why Some Spartan Women Had Two Husbands
In ancient Sparta, it was accepted practice for more women to marry and have children by more than one man.
A Fresh Hell (Chicken)
A newly identified “Hell chicken” species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit.
Birth of A National Immigration Policy
Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.